You are here

Arsenal 'world champions', Wolves rule the world and more spurious 'world titles'

Miami Heat's victory over San Antonio Spurs saw them crowned 2013 NBA champions, their second successive title, but that accolade wasn't enough for the Miami Herald newspaper, which described the victory as clinching "the world championship".

Now, we know America is at the forefront when it comes to basketball, but describing a competition that exclusively includes North American teams (29 US, one Canadian) - excluding the rest of the basketball-playing world - as the 'world championship is a bit much.

This isn't the only case of a tenuous world championship claim, however, as talkSPORT reveals…

'Hail Wolves – Champions of the World'
England's infamous 1953/54 home and away thrashing at the hands of Olympic champions Hungary (13-4 on aggregate to the Magical Magyars) was a result that not only underlined the Hungarian's vast superiority, but also demonstrated England's fading position in the global game. It was in that context that Wolverhampton Wanderers – then England's premier club side – were lauded after running out 3-2 winners against Hungary's best club team Honved, in a friendly played under new-fangled floodlights at Molineux. It was an understandable boost to fragile English confidence, but the Daily Mail took it too far by declaring 'Hail Wolves, champions of the world'. This ludicrous claim was met with much derision from the European media, who insisted that no such suggestion could be made without a proper competition being held. The result? The European Cup was set up the following year, although even that could only decide the champions of one continent… and Wolves have never won it.

West Auckland Town – the very first World Cup winners
History may show that Uruguay were the first World Cup winners in 1930, but in a small corner of County Durham, an amateur side remember the first supposedly global competition differently. Twenty-one years before Jose Nasazzi lifted the Jules Rimet trophy above his head in Montevideo, West Auckland Town took up an invitation to join teams from Italy, Germany and Switzerland in the Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy tournament. Touted as the first 'World Cup', the competition was devised to pit the best sides from world football against each other, but with the English FA refusing to associate themselves with such events, Sir Lipton nominated West Auckland as England's representatives. Against all odds the team of coal miners returned from Turin victorious and were heralded as world champions. They repeated the feat two years later, successfully defending their title, however, the fledgling FIFA dismissed the tournament, choosing to recognise the Olympic tournament as the premier world football championship instead.

Arsenal become the 'unofficial World Champions'
Otherwise known as the Zenith Data Systems Challenge Trophy, for some reason a match held in Miami between English champions Arsenal and Argentinian title holders Independiente was billed as the 'Unofficial World Club Championship', as former Gunner Perry Groves recalled in his entertaining autobiography. At the time, all English clubs were banned from European competition, which meant that Arsenal were unable to play in the 1989/90 European Cup and may explain the desire for their fans and the English media to overdo it with the hype surrounding what was merely a friendly in the Florida sun. Arsenal won 2-1, but the record books show that AC Milan - having won the 1989 European Cup final 4-0 against Steaua Bucharest – were the real 1989 world champions, following the Rossoneri's 1-0 victory over Colombian side Atletico Nacional.

Scotland - 86-time world champions
England v Scotland is the oldest international fixture, with the old rivals first facing each other in 1872 at Glasgow's Hamilton Crescent. Since then, the two have met a total of 110 times, with England running out winners on 45 occasions, but there is one fixture in particular which will forever be ingrained in the Scottish psyche. In April 1967, England were reigning world champions having memorably won the World Cup less than a year earlier, and were looking to extend their 19-match unbeaten streak against little-fancied Scotland. However, newly-appointed Scotland boss Bobby Brown had other ideas. In his first match in charge of the Tartan army, his side rant rampant, stunning the 99,000 spectators crammed into Wembley with a 3-2 victory. Shortly afterwards Scotland proclaimed themselves as the new World Champions, a claim they are entitled to make according to the Unofficial Football World Championships, which calculates the current world champions on 'winner stays on' basis, going right back to that first international match in 1872. On this basis, the UFWC state that no country has been world champions more often than Scotland, who have claimed the title 86.

Japan - American Football World Champions
Known to millions of Americans as simply 'football' and to the rest of the world as 'American football', 'gridiron' or in rare cases 'hand egg', the US-dominated game was taken global in 1999, when the International Federation of American Football (IFAF) – which surprisingly has 64 members – decided that the world was ready for a global championship. Without the Americans. To ensure it was a level playing field, the IFAF ruled that America wouldn't be allowed to compete in the first two versions of the competition, which were both subsequently won by Japan. However, come 2007, it was deemed that the competition needed US representation in order to help it grow – but under certain circumstances. According to the rules, the US side could only be comprised of newly-graduated college students (essentially those that weren't drafted by the pros) and that all levels of America's college system had to be represented – meaning for every ex-Division I talent, there had to be a community college inclusion (a bit like saying Spain have to include players from the lower divisions along with top flight footballers). The result? America still steam-rolled the opposition, scoring 133 points in three games, while conceding just 27 in their first appearance. They won in 2011, too.